We improved the efficiency of our heat pump by 17% 

Thanks for the tips

Well communicated useful information, thanks

Good work Tom. Exactly what we have found...our setback is 3 deg. DHW 47 deg. Then of course use weather compensation - set the curve to where you're comfortable. Too many have dhw set too high...and are not monitoring the weather compensation curve.

Good work. Getting the best from heat pumps is a journey. perhaps software will do it in the future. this December has really stress tested our system. we have had previous cops of 5-6 plummet to 2.7 at night (-5) but it has shown you can heat a house to lovely warmth even when my neighbours are cold even with their gas boilers. Although a couple of weeks of the year our hp will cost a fraction more than gas, when looked at annually we are on track to save ~£400 on gas. our weakness has not been the heatpump but the radiators and insulation. if we could insulate more. (we will try) its a double win, flow temp goes down and cop goes up AND heat demand drops so some kind of square law relationship i guess. Bigger rads are just a single win, as the lower flow boosts COP but wont reduce the heat demand. Although rads are cheaper than a lot of types of retrofit insulation. I have found this blog has amazing info. community.openenergymonitor.org/t/vaillant-arotherm-owners-thread/21891 great to compare the cop at various flows and air temps to see if thing are working as Vaillant claim. the PDF is in Czech but the tables are legible for all models , power outputs flows etc. why its not available in English is anyone's guess!

I leave my night time setback to no more than 3 degrees C as it use resistance heating in the morning to boost for the daytime setting if the heat pump cannot keep up with demand. Heat pumps need to run more and do less the more constant the better. The other way to improve would be to warm up the outside air lol which many have done by using an enclosure that heat with sun but still allows enough air to flow when needed. Also 4 solar panels would be enough to run a heat pump and now many models have direct solar panel connections. Cheers

Nice one Tom. We’ve had our Daikin since April 21 so second winter. I ran for a year using Nest control and achieved an SCOP of 3.78. 204m2 bungalow. No radiators or pipes changed and we have 10mm microbore drops to each radiator from 28mm main lines in the loft. I switched to weather compensation in April 22 but still need to tinker a bit more. Our SCOP hit 3.83 but our recent COP has been 2.47 in these -10 nights. Still much to learn. I need to revisit Heatgeek training on my Daikin controller

Nice... well done

Hi Tom, I've just found your channel, as we're about to have a re-survey from Octopus, so I've been soaking up all of the RU-vid videos on heat pumps that I can find. This is a great video and you're a natural presenter! If we do have a Heat Pump very soon (fingers crossed), then I'll definitely use the excellent advice in this video. Thanks for the information. Phil

How can we expect people to understand and be bothered to fiddle with the settings of a heatpump? With all other systems you set the room temperature and that’s it - no heat curves etc etc. Installers just want to install, take the money and leave. Manufacturers manuals are technical and not designed for users. Things will need to change if the average person is to be persuaded to adopt a heatpump. I say this as a heatpump owner with four years experience and an engineering degree 😆

I don’t have a ASHP - but some comparisons can be made with gas boilers in so much modern condensing boilers have an optimum efficiency curve and it seems to be turning down the flow temperature but give it longer to do it’s job. It seems to work at my sons house. My house is warm air so the temperature of the boiler is already low and I also have a set back temperature and it has saved about 10%. However this year my stat does not go above 19 degrees. 18 is the norm for the morning rising to 18.5 in the afternoon to the max early evening. As we are retired we need to heat our home all day and use throw over blankets to lift our personal comfort which works very well. Warm up time is rapid with warm air but correspondingly cool down is equally rapid as there is no retained residual heat. I’m hoping that in our new bungalow we will be able to up our comfort level once we have changed the gas boiler for an ASHP. Your vids are priceless thank you. Regards Mike

It also helps to have competent heat-pump installers!

I have used all the same adjustments as you on my ecodan - my degree days were worse early part of the year between 22 and 23. Over the whole year I was 20 kw difference - Dec 23 was very expensive in Scotland last year, just as my fixed ended…. 250 kw more

I've set the setback temperature similar to your setup, it seems to make sense that the heat pump does not work too hard to recover the lost heat. I'm seriously thinking about lowering the DHW to 48. To be honest, outside of morning showers and maybe a little dish washing, we really don't use much DHW during the day. Will the slight drop down make much difference? Love the videos.

Hi Tom great video. I find that set back of flow temp is better and leave the heat pump running all the time as room temp set back the whole system temp drops to ambient and then it takes more energy to get back up. Dropping the flow temp by 5 degrees seems to work for us. We have a 220year old stone house so always best to keep the fabric warm as you need to re warm that before the air temp rises. Worth a try?

Mechanical engineer here, The need for a more conservative set buck temp is particular to the emmiter size, so it is not really true for every heat pump insulation. For example the addition of a just one fancoil unit, can significantly reduce the reheat time, without any need for water temperature increase. The only considerations are the bit of noice and air movement, however I find both pleasant during a cold winter morning. Also the SCOP can get quite a boost with the continuous use of such unit across the heatting season, combined with a lower weather condensation curve.

Thanks Tom, really interesting and food for thought. I've not done any tinkering on our Samsung system yet, but I'm tempted to have a try now, as the flow temp has been nudging 50 degrees on occasion over the last week or so. I've set our system to only vary 2 degrees (18 over night and during day when no one home, 19 in the morning, 20 in the evening) which seems to work well. Our hot water is set at 50, but I'm going to try dropping this by a couple of degrees. My only concerns here though, is that during the weekly legionnaires heat cycle, the system would have to work harder for longer, would this counteract the minimal savings achieved over the week by having a lower water temp?

Hi, Economy you achive it is also because the exterior temperature was also higher then last year.

Glad to see your progress Tom, steep learning curve isnt it? Just one comment regarding your hot water. Be carful about running at such low temperatures all the time. I would heat the hot water store to at least 60deg once a week to make sure that any legionella is killed off. A lot of heat pumps can do this and have setting to automate it, but not all do and its worth mentioning to your viewer to be aware of this.

Tom, the HP should be running full time, in order to be efficient. No setback temp for the night

Tom we have had a heat pump fitted recently, we are being told not to tinker with the settings as they control them from their end. The office. We are getting it commissioned shortly were I assume he will set the various settings. What are your thoughts on this

You could account for that by a slightly warmer autum/winter

Hi Tom how do I get in to the installation setting as mine has a code to enter it says 0000

How much is the set back saving you? Next experiment might be reducing the set back to see if it enables an even lower heat curve.

The biggest thing that I have learned from the these videos is that if you have mains gas, ASHP may be cheaper or more expensive than gas . (I'm not including the initial high cost of installation of ASHP which will also needs to be factored into the cost. eg £15000 over a 10 year life adds £1500 a year.) ASHP will only be better or comparable to gas if you keep it on permanently in the colder 6 months of the year. ie if you go out to work every week day and are out of the house for say 10 hours a day, you still have to keep the heat pump on to keep an empty house warm. They are extremely inefficient at providing a big initial boost when the house has cooled down a bit. So if you are at home all day, for every day of the week eg retired, housewife etc it will be great. If you are at work all day it will be more expensive.

How do you calculate the efficiency of the hp ?

What’s your heat curve set to Tom?

19c inside your house? Damn. I tried optimising energy usage and found i cant live at lower temp and would rather switch off unnecesary rooms, heat for less hours daily than lower the room temp

Not worried about legionnaires?

You could have installed a cylo® from Remit Zero is an emission-free replacement for domestic, gas and oil-fired boilers. Air to water Heat pumps are a waste of money. You got screwed. Happy New year.

200 kwhs is only about £2.13 worth of gas lol

SET IT AND FORGET IT!

Its probably far more economical to run your heating off the heat pump and your hot water from a combi boiler.

Is it necessary to bring politics into this? Ukraine “solidarity” 🤦‍♂️

No need to bring in politics into this!

European countries (compared to UK) are way ahead in terms of optimised heating in winter. Once their heating comes on it pretty much stays on all the time just ticking over. The current situation has forced us all to look closer how we do things and squeeze every drop out of our system. Only you will know what's is best for your house once you have tried it. On the cost of energy, I remember as a child seeing on TV our Govt announcing the UK would not be short of CHEAP gas for the next 200yrs. It's till there..... but wait, our Govt has just signed an agreement with USA to import their fracked LNG which will be shipped in by tankers using low grade polluting fuel oil. We have wind farms shut down because of excess wind and production (we still need to pay them for their downtime) as the grid cannot deal with the extra generation and there is nowhere to store it. What a 1st World Problem we have !! DROP THE UNIT PRICE, so people could heat their homes at time of need this winter and the elderly won't die whilst that energy can be absorbed. So much is wrong. Good article: www.linkedin.com/posts/patrick-robertson-80ab01204_energy-environment-tax-activity-7004454549927186433-dwRl